


Afterimage

by celinamarniss



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Legacy of the Force Series - Aaron Allston & Troy Denning & Karen Traviss
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Fix-It, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Ghosts, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Legacy of the Force was a goddamn OOC travesty, Skywalker Family Feels, a universe in which Mara was fridged is unacceptable to me, canon was a mistake, posthumous Mara is still a bamf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 09:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9542552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celinamarniss/pseuds/celinamarniss
Summary: After her death inSacrifice,Mara returns to her family as a Force ghost.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The first line of the fic is from _Revelation: Star Wars Legends (Legacy of the Force)_ By Karen Traviss.

"Oh...sweetheart...you found me. _You found me._ Stay awhile."

Mara stays.

\- -

Even after her death, the bond between them remains unbroken, their minds and spirits still linked through the Force. Her body may have died—a brutal, lonely death that still haunts Luke, a part of him never able to forgive himself for not being there for her—but her presence never left him. The Force binds them together still. He wonders sometimes if that’s the reason she stayed, when all the other dead have left him.

Luke knows that if the bond had snapped, he would have never survived the loss.

\- -

Only Jedi and Force sensitives can see and hear Mara. She's invisible to the rest of the world, unable to communicate except through her family.

Just forget about talking to droids.

"I'm not going crazy." Luke has to tell other beings over and over. Has to explain in the face of disbelieving looks; the feeling of heavy suspicion in the air that the leader of the galaxy’s Jedi has finally cracked over the death of his wife. No blames him for that, of course, a terrible tragedy, but is such a man really capable of fulfilling his responsibilities?

Ben just glares, dares anyone to question him. He speaks clearly to his mother, even if it looks, to everyone else in the room, like he's talking to the air. Sometimes Luke wants to warn him not to alienate non-Force sensitives; to be careful who overhears him talking to his mother.

Sometimes Luke plays along, pretends that everything’s just fine and that there isn’t an invisible woman next to him, arguing with everything the Senator from Naboo—about as Force sensitive as a pile of rocks—says to her husband. Sometimes it means making an excuse when something she says that no one else can hear makes him burst into laughter. (She does that on purpose).

Sometimes he grows tired of the excuses. He just wants to talk to his wife, even if no one else can see her.

\- -

Except for Han. Han can see her just fine. No one knows why, he just does.

\- -

The conversation with Karrde is painful.

“You’re telling me she’s a ghost now, but only you can see her.” Karrde’s hair has gone white, but his eyes are sharp as ever. They search the room as if he could see she her if he just looks in the right place. (Mara hates the way they glide over her, blindly tracking through her. She can’t _will_ Karrde to see her, no matter how hard she tries.)

“And other Jedi and Force-sensitives.” Luke tilts his head slightly as Mara speaks to him. “Mara wants to know if you’d like me to pass on her confirmation code…”

Karrde shakes his head. “I believe you, Luke.” But Luke knows that it's harder for Karrde to _accept_ that she's _there_ , and that he'll still never hear her voice again.

“I’ve heard that fathers shouldn’t outlive their children,” Karrde says softly, almost to himself.

Luke doesn’t turn to look at Mara. He can feel her devastation clear enough through the bond and he doesn’t think he could handle seeing it on her face.

\- -

Of course she’s _angry_. Her husband often reminds her that it’s not the Jedi way, but there are things that she can’t forgive, and the universe has rarely been on her side.

\- -

Being incorporeal is a bitch.

She hates not being able to interact with the world around her. She can't protect her family. She can't take her lightsaber and fight at their side. She can't even pick up a datapad, for kriff's sake!

She thinks it might actually kill her all over again the first time they’re in a situation where Luke and Ben are in danger—she sees the blaster bolt headed through the air toward her son and there’s nothing she can do about it but shout a warning. The bond between her and Luke was forged in battle and now she has to watch him fight alone, and it _kills her_. Mara has never been good at letting others fight her battles. She can serve as an extra pair of eyes and ears, she can watch their backs; she can guide them but she can’t defend them.

She'll do whatever she can, in any form that she has, but sometimes it doesn't feel like enough.

\- -

She can't hold her son in her arms.

\- -

Mara _hates_ not being able to fly her ship. "Don't you dare scratch the paint, Skywalker."

"I flew against the _Death Star,_ Mara, I think I can handle a simple docking procedure."

She's a horrible backseat driver, but Luke doesn't have the heart to ask her to leave the cockpit. He imagines that he'd be even worse if he were in her position. Even her snidest comments are better than the silence when she's not there.

\- -

The incorporeal image she projects onto this plane is younger than she’d been when she died. Luke supposes she looks about the age she was when they married. _His_ _Mara_ , he thinks of her. She lets her hair fall loose around her shoulders, which she rarely did when she was alive.

They still don’t agree on everything, and it’s much harder to walk away from an argument when your wife can walk through walls. They no longer share many of the daily routines of married life: making each other a cup of morning caf, or sharing a shower, or complaining about the temperature—always too cold for him and too hot for her—or… Luke does miss the little things. He misses the warmth of her body beside his.

To everyone else she’s just light and sound, but to him she’s still _Mara._ She’s his other half, her presence still as vivid to him in the Force as when she was alive. He can still sense her bright mind, the sharp bite of her anger, and her fierce and tender love for her family as clearly as ever.

 _It’s enough,_ he tells himself, _it’s enough._

\- -

"I don't want to alarm you," the childcare droid at the creche tells Leia in her fussy, mechanical voice. "But little Allana has invented an imaginary friend."

"Oh, that's just her aunt," Leia says.

She looks over to where Allana is seated on the floor, drawing something on a piece of flimsiplast. Mara sits next to her, saying something Leia can’t hear at this distance, and Allana laughs. It probably does look odd to a droid.

A little boy seated nearby glances over and gives Mara a long sideways look. _Force-sensitive,_ Leia thinks, _I’ll have to speak to his parents_. What she _won’t_ do is tell Allana to stop speaking to her aunt just to reassure the childcare workers and other parents. Mara is family, and Leia’s family has never conformed to whatever makes the galaxy comfortable.

Mara adores her grandniece. Leia often finds them huddled together, Mara's transparent, blue-edged form hovering over Allana, plotting the Force knows what. Leia is happy that Allana, deprived of both of her parents, hasn’t lost her great-aunt as well.

There are times when Han and Leia can't watch over Allana (the galaxy is still _constantly_ in need of saving), and they know that Mara will be there.

\- -

"Your mother was an amazing dancer." (They ignore all that _was_ implies).

"I still would be if that _farm boy_ wasn't distracting me all the time," she retorts.

The verbal sparring is familiar, comforting. Mara laughs as Luke sweeps her up in response and waltzes her around the room.

(They ignore the way she flickers like a holo; her blurry edges where their hands don't quite meet).

\- -

Ben and Mara talk.

When she was alive, she never said much about her grim childhood and career as the Emperor's pet assassin, the memories painful and ridden with guilt and loss. She tells him everything now. She teaches him all the tricks of the trade she learned as a smuggler, from how to hotwire a cargo ship to the best way to win an argument with a Sullustan trader. She tells him a story about his father and a drunken bantha that makes him laugh so hard he falls out of his chair. He hears stories about his family that he’s never heard before. She says things that he doesn't think she's even told his father. As though she wants to tell him everything she knows before she slips out of his life again.

They don't talk about her death, and his role in it. Ever.

\- -

In the evenings on their ship, Luke always sits with his hand on the table so that Mara can lay hers over his as she sits beside him. He can't feel her hand, but it's as close as he can ever get to holding it in his own.

\- -

In their room, in the dark, Luke says, "I miss making love to you, Mara."

He hears her dry chuckle. _"Making love?_ You've always been a sap, Farmboy." He senses her shift closer. With the lights out, he can't see her arms wrap around him and can't feel her embrace, but he can sense her presence enveloping him through the Force, the gentle caress of her mind against his. "I miss it too."


End file.
